Took 1 trade today. It wasn't a trade I normally take, but it was more or less an attempt at just getting rid of the hesitation and fear and go for it.
You'll notice my chart looks slightly different. I was PM'd some advice on this trend indicator. Blue is an uptrend, red is a downtrend and take signals in the direction of that trend. I don't know how the lines are calculated, but I have noticed that if the bars close through one of the lines, it'll flip the trend indicator. If anyone knows how those lines are calculated as far as where they are plotted, please let me know. I can't seem to find the strategy wizard on NinjaTrader to see if I can get into the code.
I went back and did a quick test on previous days and it would have kept me out of yesterday's loss, but it also would have kept me out of taking some trades that actually looked pretty good, counter trend.
Trade A: This was a rangy mess, but a rejection of the EMA, failed breakout of the range, and a short(ish) signal at the top of the range. The problem was the fact that the bottoms of the preceding bars were all up trending so there was a lot of buying pressure. If this range would have been back and forth, solid bull and bear bars, with opens and closes near each other then it would have been a better trade.
Trade 1: This one might be hard to find on the chart, but it's in the middle of a bear bar. It was a short off the break of the previous pivot low. It was coming in hard so I entered at 1 tick below the low. I also had yesterday's close right below there. I got entered in and it went right down to the horizontal line and came back. It was very fast that it kind of shook me out of the trade, in a way. I moved my stop quickly to +1 and got taken out of the trade. It only would have went against me 4 ticks before going much, much lower.
The fact that it was reacting so quickly I was afraid of it hitting that line and then snapping back up in a failed breakout. I don't normally take these trades so it was a new experience. I know it is valid in the bigger trend, but usually my trades come before it breaks those lows and then I would look for a break of the lows, already in the trade, already in profits and don't have to worry about the failed/weak breakout having it snap back against me. I didn't see a way to get in before hand, but looking back on it now I could have probably shorted that internal double bottom looking for it to test and break the pivot low.
Trade B: Very big bar, weak on a continued push to new lows. It sort of had the feel of a failed breakout with a lot of buying pressure coming in. It would have been a ballsy long, but you could have scalped it for at least a breakeven trade.
Trade C: I took the reasoning on this that we possibly had a big suspected reversal to go long, but then the C bar failed to continue long so we're going short. The problem was the fact of the buying pressure in the previous 3 bars just had the feel that the bears were getting tired.
Trade D: The previous bar was butting it's head on the EMA and was a 1 tick high before coming back down and then eventually closing as a pure doji. Then the D bar comes down and does a 2 tick low, sucking in the shorts, and then goes higher as a bear trap. That is a new type of trade for me so I'm going to have to work on recognizing those. I really liked it after the fact.
Total: +.5
Monthly Total: -25.5
mTotal: 0
Monthly mTotal: +74
So it seems like this trend "indicator" wasn't a distraction. I have to use it more to really say if it was helpful, but it definitely didn't get in the way of any conflicting signals.
I'm pretty hesitant on adding new things in the middle of already trying to learn one thing. I am confident in being able to trade the way that I do that I don't believe in the whole idea of adding more to try and make my analysis better. My problems are psychological, not analytical. I don't like to have a bunch of lines and indicators on my charts because there is too much indecision and conflicting signals and I don't want to deal with it. I'm confident with what I'm doing now and actually enjoy the simplicity of my charts.
Anyways, I'm happy with my one trade today. Even though I could have had a lot more if I held on, I still took the trade and felt the swings of emotions so it's one step closer to overcoming those emotions.
Yesterday towards the close I took a sim trade on that last strong move up and took +30 ticks. Although it was just sim and the emotions weren't fully involved with deciding whether it was a trade or not, it gave me the feelings of success and it really just strengthened the idea of how I should feel, no emotions, no worries, not over thinking. Another thing it did was helped me to refocus. It was a relief. I realized today that I was much more focused on the charts and it felt good to just sit here and watch. I forced myself to stay away from the internet because I actually wanted to find trades. I think I did well today, except that I shouldn't have taken off my trade too soon. I said yesterday that today I was going to make a profit, and a half a tick is a profit!
I'm looking forward to tomorrow!
"Understand who is trustworthy, figure out how to collaborate with them, learn how to outsmart those who are not. Those are the kinds of tasks our brains evolved to perform." - Jason Zweig
